Planning a growing connection

In 2007, when my husband Gordon and I started talking about getting married, we wanted to share a ministry. We met at Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Fullerton.

One of the things that happens at Emmanuel is ministry. It's the kind of ministry that develops from the bottom up. If you have a strong desire or calling to minister to the community, you discuss it with the priests and, with their blessing, you move forward.

It turned out Gordon and I had the same calling: a garden in the vacant land at the back of our church property. I called it a community garden and Gordon, being from England, called it an allotment.

We took our ideas to Father Rob and he enthusiastically gave his blessing for our dream. As we talked about our garden idea, it became obvious that a number of people had had the same idea. It had even been tried a couple of times without success.

Our first criterion was that our garden had to be successful. This meant no hard digging, no problems with weeds or burdensome watering chores, and our plants had to grow abundantly. Gordon and I did some experimenting at home with a method of gardening I had heard about called no-dig.

After our first Steering Committee meeting in October 2009, we had some concrete ideas/goals:

• Plant in raised beds: We have very compacted, heavy clay soil, as does most of Fullerton. This kind of clay is very hard to work in. It drains slowly and dries hard as a rock. The answer was raised beds.

• Depend on the no-dig method: As the name indicates, you do not dig into the native soil; you build layers on top. Start with newspapers, followed by hay, then straw, topping off with a layer of compost. In between each layer, sprinkle blood and bone meal (see detailed instructions at right).

• Drip irrigation to each bed: We would install a hose bib and a drip line in each raised bed. Individual gardeners could add a battery-operated timer if desired.

• Wood chips for paths: Pathways and common areas would be mulched with wood chips to keep weeds down and enrich the soil.

• Organic gardening: We would use only organic fertilizers and pest control.

• Compost waste: Compost bins would be made from recycled wood pallets for our waste material.

• Get support from larger community: Our garden was going to be a major project. We would need help. We would talk to people, make phone calls and write letters telling people what we were doing and asking if they would like to help.

As a group, our Steering Committee accepted the challenge to create something beautiful and meaningful where people could express themselves in a different and new way.

HOW TO START A NO-DIG GARDEN

Start with a space. A raised bed is ideal but not necessary. Have on hand newspaper (not the shiny ads), alfalfa hay, straw, compost, blood meal, bone meal and a source of water. For an 8-by-4-foot bed, you will need a bale each of hay and straw and three to four bags of compost.

1. Cover your growing area with a layer of newspaper 20 sheets thick. This stops weeds and attracts worms. Dust with blood meal and bone meal and gently saturate with water. We use about 3/4 cup of each fertilizer for an 8-by-4-foot bed.

2. Add a pad of alfalfa hay 4 inches thick, dust with blood and bone meal and water. Bales of hay and straw come apart in 3- to 4-inch-thick pads. Try not to leave any holes between the pads of hay and straw.

3. Next comes 4 inches of straw, again dusted with blood and bone meal and watered. Don't skimp on the alfalfa hay and straw, because they compress by about half in the first couple of months. If you skimp on the amounts, you lose the benefits of water retention and thriving plants.

4. Finally, top off with 3 to 4 inches of compost; add another dusting of blood and bone meal and gently water. You may find that the materials are higher than your raised bed. Don't worry; it will soon start to break down and shrink.

5. Water daily for a week.

6. Plant seedlings and watch your garden grow.

– Lorra Dickinson is a writer who lives in Fullerton with her husband. She is a grandmother of triplets. Email her at lalmstedt@gmail.com, and stay tuned for future stories from the community garden.